


Circe

by snagov



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Desire, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, False Identity, Love, M/M, Pining, Succubi & Incubi, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, gratuitous abuse of classical literature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:28:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24543868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: Incubi are known to shapeshift to appear as one's deepest desire. Geralt has found one.It looks like Jaskier.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Other(s)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 422





	Circe

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Цирцея](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24698680) by [gronkowski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gronkowski/pseuds/gronkowski)



_“our legs are stiff and knock together /  
_ _our faces are formless like the stars.”_

Tristan Tzara, The Great Lament Of Our Obscurity Three

Tell me about a doubtful man. Go on, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had butchered the miserable town of Blaviken. Where he drifted and found himself, one hand on a sword to keep mankind safe. Nowhere to ever call home. Yes, it's an old story but it holds true.

Tell it from the beginning.

The sun is rising. Geralt watches it from where he lays on a dusty and unmade bed, the only living soul in the place. The curtains are moth-eaten, half-sick with mildew and shadows. In the light, the room is completely changed. How do we define a life outside of this room? The morning makes fools of us all. 

_I want you and that makes everything else a lie._

Let me explain.

* * *

He had come, as always, to kill something.

The contract, Geralt later decides, was underpriced. He'd cleaned his nails with a knife and decided to ask for more coin once the deed was done. 

"What's in there?" Geralt had asked the lord who had offered the reward.

The man had given an uneasy frown and shifted. Started to say something and thought better of it. Eventually, all Geralt was told was _"Only what you bring yourself."_

Further up the road, he had found the trouble. An abandoned manor house, half-eaten by ghost stories and ruin. Surrounded on every side by a thick wood, it was as isolated as an island. Every window was broken, every door unlocked. Rumors curled around it of phantoms and demons. The only living things, beyond the spiders, were wild pigs rooting about in the old gardens. Geralt had narrowed his eyes and kept his sword handy. 

At the top of the stairs, he finds the devil himself.

Geralt walks in slowly. The room, of course, is dark. A peculiar sort of darkness, the one that crawls up the spine and casts shivers in the bones. His senses are dulled in this dark. A night he can't penetrate, his Witcher skills reduced by infernal hands. The floor is gently sloped and creaks beneath his step.

A voice comes from the pile of shadows on the bed. "Haven't you heard of knocking? It's all the rage these days. You should try it."

Geralt squints, trying to focus in the unusual blackness. Shadows become shape and form. A man sits on the bed. He has brown hair and clear skin. Geralt traces the blue veins under the pale skin. The intriguing face, the straight nose and strong dark brows. Blue eyes flecked with amber and lichen, a soft, amused curl to his lip. 

_What are you doing here?_ Geralt wants to ask. He doesn't ask. He knows that this is not Jaskier. No, Jaskier is safely back at the inn, polishing up their misfortunes into a song. Geralt breathes. Counts out the measure of the minutes. He stares at the knockoff of Jaskier, one hand tightly gripping the hilt of a sword. 

“Come now,” the creature with the thieving looks says, “Is that any way to treat a man who wants to take you to bed?”

“What the fuck are you?” Geralt hisses. He is rough-voiced. A hand with slim fingers reaches for him. There are string calluses on the pads of the fingertips, there from years of playing the lute. There is a smile on the bard's face. This is Jaskier, this is _not_ Jaskier.

In the dark, does it matter?

(It doesn't have to be easy. Doesn't have to be simple. It never is.)

A strange smile settles on the beloved face, a sort he’s never seen before. “I’m whatever you want me to be.”

In the world of monsters, there are few that Geralt has never seen before. He knows the striga by sight and the she-wolf by sound. He's slaughtered each and every one of the man-created abominations of Oxenfurt (those devils in their den). He has never met this sort, yet knows it all the same. He knows by the fire in his cells, the quickness of his pulse, the twitch between his thighs. This is no small monster, but a skilled one too. Geralt's nose picks up the faint scent of potions and herbs on the back of the air. A witch of drugs and charms. _Polypharmakos_. An incubus. A devil, a demon, an apparition of smoke and mirrors, dressed up as his own desire. 

( _Only what you bring yourself._ Geralt is full of Jaskier in his heart and brings him everywhere.)

"Come here," Jaskier says. (Geralt allows the incubus to borrow the name, just for the moment. Just for tonight.) 

Geralt goes willingly.

Things he can have: Tonight, a lie.  
Things he cannot have: Tomorrow, the truth. 

Let us put tomorrow off, just for a little while. Stop all the clocks. It's only sex. (Isn't it?) Lie down. Come, you lie down too. Jaskier reaches for Geralt, pushing him to the bed, and Geralt falls without argument. He is weak, his cock half-hard. His white hair spreads against the dark pillows like negative space. He is the unknown, the unwritten part. 

Jaskier leans forward and presses his mouth to Geralt's, firm and earnest. The kiss of a man in love, confessing it all at once. Tangled together, their lips part. Geralt tastes the stolen fruit, snatched off the table and swallowed down here while no one is looking. It tastes familiar. Like pottage sweetened with honey and laced with wine.

" _Fuck._ This is wrong," Geralt says, against a mouth he is pressing into. 

"I want you."

"You're not real." 

"Real enough for now." Jaskier's hips dig into Geralt's groin. He nearly moans and holds it back. The creature kisses up along Geralt's neck, trailing fire in his wake. His hands weave into the unforgiving white of Geralt's hair and come to cup his face, looking down through half-lidded eyes. "No one will know. It's just you and me, Witcher."

"I should kill you."

"Yes, you should. But you won't."

Geralt grunts, uncertain of what to say.

"What do you want?" Jaskier asks, climbing astride his body, all long lines and lean angles.

"You." 

"Tell me how."

Geralt doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to. This is a lie, a sham. Everything here is what came with him and with it all the dark spots too. What does he want? What can he have? This is a fantasy, the edges of this are only reality. He can have anything he likes but the truth. 

So the demon takes. And gives. 

Touch. The sheets are soft against his bare back. The pillow too firm. It bends his neck. His eye twitches, he needs to scratch his nose. He is breathing sharply, his dick hard and damp and yes, here he is, laid out under a ghost touch, already wet between his thighs. His clothes slip off. The buckle clatters on the floor. Geralt opens his eyes in the strange dark and sees little but pale skin. Jaskier in starlight. See the perfect arc of the spine, the wide spread of his shoulders. 

Capable hands slip and part the waves, part his damp thighs. Geralt is used to running the show. This is new and fire catches in his throat. Wanted and unspoken, never spoken, to be pushed down by a firm hand, shown where to go. To be taken apart like this, each leg in one hand, his nakedness exposed and vulnerable. Jaskier takes him in with a hungry look. Geralt's cock twitches.

This version of Jaskier comes as a two for one special, a package deal. Jaskier, yes, and every dark desire too. The demon kisses him at the base of his neck, where Geralt has dreamt. Tastes the sweat from the center of his chest, there at the breastbone, where he has wanted. Hands move over his chest, up and down his thighs, toward the center of him and back again. Undone undone undone. Here, like a beast on the table, the butcher with a knife, lovingly taking him apart.

 _I love you. I love you and that makes everything else a lie._ He builds tonight out of lies like matchsticks, love built on top of a house of cards. It will all crash down around him eventually. 

Does it matter? (No, keep going.) 

Pressed down, spread eagle. Jaskier is heavier on top of him than Geralt had expected. Beloved and centering weight, an anchor in a port. Soft breath, soft touch, and Geralt swallows a gasp as Jaskier takes his cock in a slippery hand. He doesn't move, that weight holding him, pinning him like a butterfly to a board. Jaskier watches Geralt's face with wide eyes as he fucks Geralt by hand, up and down and back again. His weight centered over Geralt's body, holding him steady. 

Steady. A heartbeat. A lifeboat. A cornerstone, something to build a life around. Jaskier has been steady all this time. 

Someone moans. It sounds like his own voice. 

What does he want? To be opened and consumed, fucked without end. _Hold me down and wear me out and keep going until there's nothing left. Don't let me think. Don't give me a chance._ There is an emptiness that he is built around, a hollow core. He can be filled, if only for a night. Borrow skin, lend love, stop up the gap. The want is sharp in him and his groin aches. _Fuck me, please, that._ (It's something he never says, never admits to. Penetration, the descent of another man into the deep of himself. He feels betrayed by the emptiness of his own body, the way he aches for it. Desire makes a hungry mouth.) 

Jaskier touches him. Runs slender fingers up the underside, tripping over the veins. Geralt is clumsy when he reaches back and a mottled flush invites itself to his throat. Why is it that love makes us new again? He has done this before. Countless times with other bodies in other rooms. He should know what the hell he's doing.

What does he know? (Nothing, really.) In touch, he feels his body coming apart. Yes, yes, pull out the pieces, the wheel and the axle. Wipe the grease away. A kiss, yes, again a kiss. He could live on a single kiss. He kisses Jaskier and tastes ambrosia and nectar too. (Geralt does not believe in the gods. Created and inhuman, not on the list. They had wiped the spit off the apple and thrown it in the trash, never offering even a bite. But here, in bed, he feasts.)

 _Jaskier Jaskier Jaskier._ Fire in the hole, infection in the blood. _You are a fever I am learning to live with._ He copes with love. Folds it up and tucks it away. No, it's not time to look at it, to talk about it. When will it be time? Sometimes, the moment doesn't exist. Sometimes it never will. Love. Love on his own terms, like this. With gentle men, sleepy-eyed and creeping into his bed. Men made up of ghost stories, who always leave before morning.

 _This isn't real. Not real. It is not._ Geralt repeats this, a rosary of real life. He could end it. Two swords there, each by the bed and at the ready. Steel conquers all. 

(He is a Witcher, made of steel. Made to keep mankind's soft skin safe. Don't forget the difference, Geralt. Mind your place.) 

Jaskier feels like steel, pushing deep inside of him. The wetness is everywhere, his own cock is dangerously red and leaking. Geralt presses his burning head back into the pillows, his hands clutching at skin and sinew, at elegant arms and slender shoulders. _Oh god, oh fuck fuck fuck._ This is what he has wanted to know, the weight of Jaskier above him. The heat of Jaskier inside of him, filling him up, filling him out. 

(Not Jaskier. The incubus that wears his face. Ignore it. Tomorrow's problem. Geralt fucks himself on a dream and damnation.)

Touch, touch, finally this impossible touch. Their mouths fit together, Geralt pushes back and kisses Jaskier as he moves. His tongue tied in Jaskier's mouth. Silence is forgivable for now, just for a little while. He doesn't have to speak. Doesn't have to grimace, no. What is he asked? What is he giving? Himself, bare and spread. Spatchcocked on an unmade bed. Warm and wanting, there for the taking. _Give me this, give me this, please._

When his eyes are closed, they are not yellow. When his eyes are closed, he can pretend. Here, he can ask. Here, he doesn't need to ask. Here, he can fuck like there's a reset button. No one will know the mess of him in the morning, no one will know that he wants _this._ No one will know that Geralt loves. That he might even need someone. He's just a body, just a beast to be opened up and filled.

He can ignore the need in the morning, bury it deep with the dead.

Geralt, look at yourself. Strange and created. Tell me, how are you different from the experiments of Oxenfurt? Masterpieces with flesh caught between their fangs and blood in their bellies. You slay the beasts, a beast yourself. What is he good for? 

Nothing else.

He keeps his yellow-bellied eyes shut and the blankness at his side. Sight, crossed out. He buries his nose into Jaskier's chest, inhaling the sharp, acrid sweat, overwhelming every other scent. Smell, crossed out. He kisses and mouths at Jaskier's skin, leaving bruises like wax seals _(mine mine mine mine)._ Taste, crossed out. Jaskier's hips snap forward, driving deeper deeper deeper, and the sound stuck in Geralt's throat is dislodged. He cries out sharply, drowning out the rest. Sound, crossed out. 

He comes on the back of Jaskier's hard cock, surrounded by this beloved body, surrounded by this temple of song, one lute-callused hand desperately pulling at his own cock in a messy fist. Nothing but this, only this body, this one, this beast with two backs they have made together. The rest drops away as Geralt comes. 

Touch, crossed out.

"I love you," he gasps. Wrong place, wrong time. He is making love to Jaskier and fucking a demon holding his place. Keeping that side of the bed warm. Jaskier cries out and buries himself deeper, clutching harder, coming on the very sound of love. 

But would it go like that? Out beyond these doors. This is a lie and he has only what he could carry. 

His heart slows. His breath settles.

The false Jaskier's come is bitter on his hands. He licks it off, wanting to taste. Wanting to know. Yet, it could be wrong, this is only what he's fathomed. Imagined. Wanted. _What would you be like? Outside of this, outside of my fucking head? I know it's not right, I didn't get it right. How would you be if I took you to bed? If you took me? Would you be nervous? (I would.) Would we laugh, bumping into the walls, trying to make it to a bed? Would it be desperate, drunk, quiet, raucous, would you come apart on my fingers the way I hope you might, like an explosion of space and stars?_

How would it go? Geralt thinks of brown hair and a smile in the bright afternoon light and doesn't know at all. He closes his eyes, wondering if the real Jaskier is sharing his own bed tonight, back at that musty inn. _Is someone touching you now? Does he know your spine, the gentle curve, the touch of scoliosis that the nurse found with her knuckles when you were seven, rapping on your back, ratatat? Are they within you, offering to the temple of you? Do they know what is it like to enter you fully, your body stretching around their own? Do you feel the same wrenching pleasure, the same uncertainty after coming down? Does he cup you to his lips for a kiss - like this? (The way I would, if you would let me.)_

Geralt swallows down his own want and puts the cork in. Keep it silent, keep it stoppered. No good can come of it. What is he afraid of? Everything. Everything he cannot stick a knife in, everything he cannot slit the throat of. He grits his teeth, shifting against the mattress, aware of the bulk of himself. 

Grit under the nails. Lines under his eyes. No address to call home. No coin in the bank. What can he offer? Nothing. No soft pillow to land. No jasmine-scented letters. No bowls of pears and apples too, just because you liked them once. His hair falls in his face. White as a ghost. White as a little lie. Geralt rolls over onto his back, his hand resting on his stomach, feeling the density. Blood courses through his veins. He concentrates and feels it, each red blood cell as it rounds the curves of his arteries and heads back again. His heart pumps, tied to sensation. 

_"What do you want?"_ The demon had asked earlier that night.

Geralt is still, the sweat cooling on his brow. He is thinking about history. He is thinking about empty spaces and vacancies. _Fuck,_ he thinks. If it were only sex, this could have satisfied. The ache is sharper now, tolling like a bell. It calls him home. (Home has brown hair and hazel eyes.) 

History, a series of names and events. Of occurrences within the written and recorded past. He wants history. Someday, the future. Someday all that will be left of him is his name. Tie it to Jaskier's, sew them together. There has been no constancy in Geralt's life but Jaskier and his damnable smile, his irritatingly charming way of dodging every insult, keeping to Geralt's side. After they are gone and are only their names, Geralt doesn't want to be left alone. 

What does he want?

"Tell me you love me," he asks, because he is weak below the sternum. Rotted out. The pre-Raphaelite curve of Jaskier's jaw catches in the light.

"I love you." 

There it is, the bullet. Geralt closes his eyes and sews the sound memory into the lining of his coat. Their hands fit together. He rubs a thumb over Jaskier's knuckles. This is the scar on the skin he has loved and he has often dreamt of kissing. So tonight, he does. ( _Scraped it, that's all,_ Jaskier had said once, telling him a story. _Fell down. The stones were rough._ ) 

In a few hours, he will leave the manor and go back to the inn. Jaskier, the real Jaskier, will grin and sing part of a new song. He'll sit next to Geralt, will offer the herring from his plate. _Take it,_ Jaskier will say, _I hate the stuff._ He'll pass the ale to Geralt with one hand, this same hand with a scar on the knuckle, and Geralt will not touch it. Will not smooth his thumb over it, love in each pass. 

He frowns. Why does love keep a knife behind its back? How will it go? Love as a series of non-definitive acts? What does he have to offer?

No, don't linger on that. Not now, there's room enough for regret in the morning. 

Think instead of how it might go, the two of us together. Make a wish.

There would be a bedroom in a nameless house. In the bedroom, Geralt will take off his shirt and hang it across the wood-backed chair. Jaskier's eyes will follow him across the room. A hint of a smile. Geralt will slowly unbuckle his pants, slipping them off his solid and sunless legs. He will climb on all fours on the bed over to Jaskier. Lean in and kiss the curve of his ear, down to his clavicles, his neck, between his thighs.

Yes, a man can dream.

"Tell him," the creature says, slipping out of bed. Geralt's eyes half-closed, the slippery dream still on his tongue. 

"Witchers don't love," Geralt says. He has been told this and told often. He does not forget. There are men and there are Witchers and never the twain shall meet. 

"Don't they?" The incubus kisses him with Jaskier's mouth and tells him how to get home.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Long is the way, and hard. Or so it goes.

The ride back is long and odd. He follows the route told to him, keeping an eye on (strangely docile) lions and wolves. When Geralt finally sees the inn, when he finally leads Roach to a stable and splashes water on his tired face, it feels like the long-lost end of a grinding odyssey. 

Jaskier grins and it is brighter than the sun, as Geralt has always known it to be.

"Oh, _thank god,_ " Jaskier laughs, looking him up and down with an amused glance. "I was starting to worry that I'd have to make my own fun."

"And that you'd have to pay your own way," Geralt says, sardonic and wry.

"Well. That too."

There is a softness in Jaskier's eyes. Geralt has seen it before, has seen it often, and has never known what it might mean. Jaskier tilts his head slightly, looking at Geralt still. The soft brown hair falls across his forehead. Geralt wants to brush it away. (Does not brush it away.) "I _did_ promise a fellow that I'd help him manage his… erm, wine. Last night. Once I had finished writing this song. But since you're back, I mean, well - We should probably just get on the road, shouldn't we?"

Geralt stares at him. There's something of a nervous question in Jaskier's lighthearted comment. There's _nothing_ to be misinterpreted about the proposition from last night. He had been invited back to someone's room. And said no.

"You were almost done when I left." Geralt says, his voice low. 

"Well, about that - " Jaskier's mouth curls into a half-smile. "It's not _my_ fault if I had to erase it and start all over again. Several times. Took me all night."

Something warm spreads in Geralt's chest, his stubborn heart made to believe. Witcher or man, all hearts look alike in love. The light catches on the planes of Jaskier's face. He is beautiful. See the hopeful mouth and laughing eyes. His nervous hands, fretting and tearing a piece of paper to shreds. 

It will be complicated. (Tell me about a complicated love.) 

"Jaskier," he breathes, stepping closer. Jaskier looks up at him, wide-eyed. His own breathing comes rapidly and Geralt can feel terror in his blood and bones and spine. 

"Yeah?"

The sun is bright and Geralt bends, his hands curling around Jaskier's arms. He kisses the bard and it is soft. Jaskier opens to him and he tastes of nothing of ambrosia and nectar, nothing of herbs and charms. Just this, simple skin and sweat. An electric, living pulse. Their noses are clumsy and knock together, and they laugh into the kiss with foreheads pressed against each other. Hand in hand. 

A kiss. After all this time. 

It feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> A reupload after I'd removed it once.


End file.
